First meeting of standard group end of August with major machine vision players / Thomas Lück from Allied Vision elected Chair

Barcelona/Hamburg, 09 October, 2018. The work on a common embedded vision standard has begun. With an impressive support from machine vision industry players and associations the first meeting of the respective standard group took place on 22-23 August in Hamburg. Currently involved companies in this new standard initiative include 3M, Adimec, Allied Vision, Basler, Baumer, FLIR, FRAMOS, ON Semi, Sensor2Image, Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation, and Stemmer Imaging. The Japan Industrial Imaging Association (JIIA) was present as well as the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA). The EMVA is set to be the host association of the new standard.

“The large and prominent list of supporters indicates the necessity to create such an embedded vision standard for the industry”, said the new elected Chair of the standard initiative, Thomas Lück from Allied Vision. “I am positive that progress in the development of the new standard will be fast and we certainly have news to tell during VISION 2018. This will also include the final name of the standard.” Along with Thomas Lück as Chair, Werner Feith from Sensor to Image and Miho Akahide from Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation were elected as Co-Chairs.

EMVA President Jochem Herrmann is delighted about the outcome of the inaugural meeting: “This first meeting proved to be very productive. Immediately the relevant areas of work were addressed such as the use of the sensor interface standard SLVS-EC IF; the kernel side of software; and the user side of software which includes how to link to key elements of the already existing GenICam standard which is also hosted by the EMVA. One maxim of our work is to achieve plug-and play for embedded cameras and to provide ease of exchange when using different embedded cameras.”

About EMVA:

Founded in May 2003 in Barcelona, the European Machine Vision Association currently has about 120+ members representing more than 20 nations. Its aim is to promote the development and use of machine vision technology and to support the interests of its members – machine vision companies, research institutions and national machine vision associations. The main fields of work of EMVA are: standardization, statistics, the annual EMVA Business Conference and other networking events, European research funding, public relations and marketing. To find out more visit the web site www.emva.org.

EMVA Standards Manager died at age 39

Barcelona, ​​19 September, 2018. The EMVA Board of Directors and the entire EMVA staff are shocked about the sudden and unexpected death of Arnaud Darmont who died on September 12^th after a tragic accident in the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico/USA. “With the death of Arnaud, the EMVA and in more general the entire imaging industry lost a bright and driven person who contributed significantly to both educating and advancing the industry” said EMVA President Jochem Herrmann. “Arnaud will be terribly missed. Our thoughts are with his parents and his brother”.

Vision entrepreneur driven by education idea

Arnaud Darmont dedicated his entire professional life to the computer vision industry. After his degree in electronic engineering from University of Liège (Belgium) in 2002 he began to work in the field of CMOS image sensors and high dynamic range imaging. Arnaud combined technical enthusiasm for optoelectronics with human values which led him to found his own enterprise APHESA in 2008. He authored several publications and was author of the book “High Dynamic Range Imaging – Sensors and Architectures”, which was published in a first edition 2013. He was just about finishing up the second edition to appear this year. A strong focus of his work always was the dissemination of his knowledge within the vision community and to newcomers in the computer vision domain through trainings and custom electronics design of imaging devices. He already prepared the celebration of the 10 years anniversary of APHESA at the end of this month.

A passion for machine vision standardization

Since the very beginning of his professional career, Arnaud was an active and much valued member of the EMVA 1288 standardization group. “By his profound knowledge of image sensors and by his rich experience he helped to shape the EMVA 1288 standard to the globally used standard it is today. Arnaud was also busy advertising the standard all around the globe giving courses and educating the machine vision community”, said Prof. Dr. Bernd Jähne, Chair of the EMVA 1288 Standard Group and EMVA Board Member.

Starting the successful cooperation of his company APHESA with DELTATEC SA in 2017 Arnaud gained freedom to devote more of his professional time to education and standardization activities. As such, in December 2017 the EMVA was gifted to get him on board as Standards Manager. In this position he oversaw the development of EMVA standards, but also fostered cooperation with other imaging associations worldwide on the development and the dissemination of vision standards. “We all remember how Arnaud took this role with enthusiasm and high commitment. Though he served in this position for a bit less than a year, he facilitated the start of two new EMVA standards, and built bridges to other associations. As such, he established links with standards groups of IEEE and was an active member of SPIE and IS&T. The foundation he led during this time will be part of his legacy to the entire machine vision industry”, said EMVA President Jochem Herrmann.

Arnaud contributed to the life of his city community by being an active member of local associations. When his job gave him some freedom, Arnaud indulged his passion for photography and piloted private planes as hobby.

About EMVA:

Founded in May 2003 in Barcelona, the European Machine Vision Association currently has about 120+ members representing more than 20 nations. Its aim is to promote the development and use of machine vision technology and to support the interests of its members – machine vision companies, research institutions and national machine vision associations. The main fields of work of EMVA are: standardization, statistics, the annual EMVA Business Conference and other networking events, European research funding, public relations and marketing. To find out more visit the web site www.emva.org.

Dubrovnik, ​​09 June, 2018. The EMVA Young Professional Award 2018 goes to Ms. Doris Antensteiner, for her work “Light Field and Photometric Stereo”. Antensteiner, age 32, obtained a master degree in Computer Science in 2011 and a master degree in Computer Science Management in 2014, both from Vienna University of Technology. Between 2012 and 2015 she worked as “Image Processing Engineer“ in „R&D Video and Sensors“ at Kapsch TrafficCom. Currently, she works at the Austrian Institute of Technology Center for Vision, Automation and Control and is a PhD Candidate at Graz University of Technology.

Light Field and Photometric Stereo

Recovering the shape and reflectance properties of a scene are fundamental problems in computer vision. Conventional imaging systems only provide limited information, since they can’t capture directional radiance information and only provide the sum of light at each image position. Hence, they capture two-dimensional pictures of this world. A more complete description can be achieved by using light field cameras and photometric stereo approaches. The combination of a depth map from light field with surface normals from photometric stereo enables a highly precise depth reconstruction and material analysis.

The awarded work resolves the problematic nature of acquiring a highly precise 3D surface reconstruction of objects with a focus on industrial applications. This is achieved by analyzing light rays passing through the camera lens, which capture a scene illuminated from a defined direction. An optimal fusion of light field and photometric stereo is found using variational methods. Solutions both for area-scan and multi-line scan cameras are achieved. The latter allows the algorithms in the awarded work to be apt for a wide range of industrial applications.

Applications of the results achieved in the work lie in the field of product inspection, defect detection, brand protection, product security and optical inspection of materials. A highly precise 3D reconstruction allows a detailed error detection in production lines. Methods of anti-counterfeiting can be improved by a better description and analysis of the material structure.

Young professional award part of EMVA Business Conference

The EMVA Young Professional Award is an annual award to honor the outstanding and innovative work of a student or a young professional in the field of machine vision or image processing. It is the goal of the European Machine Vision Association EMVA to further support innovation in the machine vision industry, to contribute to the important aspect of dedicated machine vision education and to provide a bridge between research and industry. With the annual Young Professional Award the EMVA intends to specifically encourage students to focus on challenges in the field of machine vision and to apply latest research results and findings in computer vision to the practical needs of the industry. The awardee was announced on June 09 during the 16^th EMVA Business Conference in Dubrovnik/Croatia, where she also had the opportunity to present her work as part of the regular conference program.

The 17^th EMVA Business Conference will take place from 16–18 May, 2019 in Copenhagen/Denmark.

About EMVA:

Founded in May 2003 in Barcelona, the European Machine Vision Association currently has about 120+ members representing more than 20 nations. Its aim is to promote the development and use of machine vision technology and to support the interests of its members – machine vision companies, research institutions and national machine vision associations. The main fields of work of EMVA are: standardization, statistics, the annual EMVA Business Conference and other networking events, European research funding, public relations and marketing. To find out more visit the web site www.emva.org.

Jeremy White to give speech on ‘The Rise of Artificial Intelligence’ / Speaker on Megatrend Deep Learning also confirmed

Barcelona, ​​16 April, 2018. The EMVA proudly announces Mr. Jeremy White giving his keynote titled ‘The Rise of Artificial Intelligence’ at the 2018 edition of the EMVA Business Conference taking place June 7-9 in Dubrovinik/Croatia. Jeremy is executive editor of Wired, the influential technology and trends magazine that covers innovation and the businesses that are building the future. He is in charge of analyzing and identifying emerging trends and technological shifts that will impact consumers and businesses alike.

From the Internet of Things to AI, smart homes to smart cities, flying cars to passenger drones, Jeremy has first-hand experience of emerging trends as well as personal contact with the global business leaders driving them. He has been writing about technology and design for more than 14 years and is also currently the technology expert for Telegraph Luxury, the Robb Report, Boat International, and Harrods. Jeremy also appears regularly on the BBC and Sky News representing the magazine.

In addition to that, the EMVA is happy to announce Mr. Michal Czadybon, General Manager at Adaptive Vision, talking about ‘Deep Learning in Industrial Quality Inspection: Experiences from the field’ in the technical part of the conference program. The Megatrend Deep Learning will also be covered by another speech given by Professor of EECS Jitendra Malik from UC Berkeley who will dedicate this presentation to ‘Deep Learning for Deep Visual Understanding’.

The entire agenda as well as all registration and other details to the EMVA 2018 Business Conference can be viewed at www.business-conference-emva.org.

About EMVA:

Founded in May 2003 in Barcelona, the European Machine Vision Association currently has about 120+ members representing more than 20 nations. Its aim is to promote the development and use of machine vision technology and to support the interests of its members – machine vision companies, research institutions and national machine vision associations. The main fields of work of EMVA are: standardization, statistics, the annual EMVA Business Conference and other networking events, European research funding, public relations and marketing. To find out more visit the web site www.emva.org.

Arnaud Darmont coordinates standardization activities of the association

Barcelona, ​​18 January, 2018. The European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) has appointed Arnaud Darmont as new EMVA Standards Manager. Arnaud will be responsible to promote the European machine vision standardization activities worldwide and to coordinate the development process of machine vision standards. In addition, in a rapidly changing industrial environment another major task will be to identify new standardization needs.

“We are thrilled to have Arnaud joining the EMVA team to fill such an important role as Standards Manager. He brings profound and long machine vision experience in engineering, management and marketing; and has been working on CMOS image sensors, industrial cameras, image quality, and embedded processing. Furthermore, Arnaud is one of the developers of the EMVA1288 standard. We are looking forward to working with him to take the EMVA standardization activities to the next level”, says EMVA President Jochem Herrmann.

Since almost 15 years, the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) is hosting the development of standards for the machine vision industry with the now well-known and widely used standards GenICam and EMVA1288. GenICam standardizes the high level interfacing of a vision device and a computer. EMVA1288 is a characterization and specification procedure for image sensors and cameras used in machine vision.

Since 2009, the EMVA is collaborating with other international machine vision associations worldwide to work towards a standardization of the technologies and processes in our industry. These joint global standardization activities have become a pillar of the success of machine vision technology in numerous industrial and non-industrial applications.

 About EMVA:

Founded in May 2003 in Barcelona, the European Machine Vision Association currently has about 100+ members representing more than 20 nations. Its aim is to promote the development and use of machine vision technology and to support the interests of its members – machine vision companies, research institutions and national machine vision associations. The main fields of work of EMVA are: standardization, statistics, the annual EMVA Business Conference and other networking events, European research funding, public relations and marketing. To find out more visit the web site www.emva.org.